I remember a PvP developer panel discussion a couple of years ago where the lead designer at the time pointed out why it is so hard to balance GW2 PvP.
He said if they make a class and build that is powerful and easy enough for low-skill players to use successfully, then the very high skill players will take the build and just wreck everyone with it.
I remember a PvP developer panel discussion a couple of years ago where the lead designer at the time pointed out why it is so hard to balance GW2 PvP.
He said if they make a class and build that is powerful and easy enough for low-skill players to use successfully, then the very high skill players will take the build and just wreck everyone with it.
Its in the mechanic. The more high skill is rewarded, the larger the gap, and the more frustaration comes up. This leads to lower skilled players to leave. Generally players without enough wining experiences that can´t see they can catch up (casuals?) will leave. This will crawl botom up and reduce a game into a small elitists group.
So annyone asking for high skill caps (also good technical equipement and fast internet) should think of what this will cause. This is why passives are good and the UI must not be overloaded an kept well learnable for casual gamers.
When designign for e-sports you must also think of it! A big mistake is to let only the top players design the game, because this can lead to those high skill caps.
Its in the mechanic. The more high skill is rewarded, the larger the gap, and the more frustaration comes up. This leads to lower skilled players to leave. Generally players without enough wining experiences that can´t see they can catch up (casuals?) will leave. This will crawl botom up and reduce a game into a small elitists group.
So annyone asking for high skill caps (also good technical equipement and fast internet) should think of what this will cause. This is why passives are good and the UI must not be overloaded an kept well learnable for casual gamers.
Then why this (plausible) scenario didn’t happen with GW1 GvG?
The top guilds (War Machine, Last Pride, Idiot Savants, etc.) were really top, top skilled players. And yet, even if the GvG requested a team of 8 players to just start a match, the queue times were very short and you usually would get nice matches, regardless of your team skill level.
The key is to match players of the same level in pvp.
For WvW its diffrent. There it only gets troublesom if a guild with a high organisation level and skilled players rolls over much weaker players. Player numbers and skill levels should be about the same.
Also build diversity and embeded rock/paper/scissor systems help much here. When the casual beats the pro, because he just got the right counterbuild its good and leads to high motivation. The pro will still win much more and in teamplay when tactic is involved via speech com, the weaker team usualy looses but its not hopless and less trained players might win with brains and this makes the day ;-).
I remember a PvP developer panel discussion a couple of years ago where the lead designer at the time pointed out why it is so hard to balance GW2 PvP.
He said if they make a class and build that is powerful and easy enough for low-skill players to use successfully, then the very high skill players will take the build and just wreck everyone with it.
Made sense to me.
They seemed to hit a success with dragonhunter on that front. It’s simple and effective yet as higher brackets are reached its usefulness declines as players know the counters.
